


A Place Not Home

by DGCatAniSiri



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Angst with a sorta happy ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Just angst, M/M, not relationship angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-24
Updated: 2020-03-24
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:01:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23288944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DGCatAniSiri/pseuds/DGCatAniSiri
Summary: The return to the alienage is a difficult time for Taynan Tabris.
Relationships: Alistair/Male Warden (Dragon Age), Alistair/Tabris (Dragon Age), Male Tabris/Alistair
Kudos: 20





	A Place Not Home

It had been hard, being back in Denerim but being unable to cross into the alienage. It had also been bizarre. Once upon a time, the guards couldn’t throw him back their fast enough. Now, they’d been barring him from his home. 

Taynan Tabris had spent a long time away from the place he’d grown up in, the family he knew. He’d seen wonders unimaginable by even himself as recently as the day before Duncan had arrived in the alienage. He’d seen the horror of the darkspawn and the broodmother in the depths of the Deep Roads, a place that, Branka and those she’d sacrificed aside, had not seen a living soul in hundreds of years. He’d learned that the Dalish were far from the myth and legend that Valendrian had always made them out to be, and come to wonder if the aged elder of the alienage had intentionally spread such an image to those who were desperate for something more fulfilling than life confined to this desolate corner of the city.

Still... A part of him still longed to go back, to revisit the places he’d known before. A part of him wanted to call it so many years ago, but, truly, it wasn’t so long ago, was it? A year or so, perhaps, since his failed wedding. Since he’d slain Vaughn. Since he’d sacrificed his freedom in the name of protecting this place from the expected response of violence from the Arl of Denerim, in response to that last.

And what did it take to get him past that barrier? Rumors of a fucking plague. That there was something tearing through his home, his people, his family, and potentially leaving them all for dead. 

Soris. Shianni. His father. He even wondered what had become of the poor girl who’d come to Denerim, only to have her wedding taken away from her. Nesiara, he remembered. The match had been doomed at the start, of course, but... She hadn’t deserved any of what had followed either. 

Arl Urien had died, either at Ostagar or on the way there (rumor was that the Crows had disposed of him on Howe’s order, though there was no evidence one way or another, and, with Howe himself dead, the point was moot). In response, Howe had become the new Arl of the city, the alienage included. Considering his part in Anora’s kidnapping, it had been inevitable that he would not survive an equally inevitable encounter with the Wardens as they’d rescued her. That meant that right now, the ruler of this section of the city was in great dispute.

And yet, Taynan could only see this as being further evidence that having Arl Howe – likely, uncharitable as it was, especially considering the handful of humans he now called his nearest and dearest, any human – was at best no better than Urien had ever been. And Howe had been far from the best. 

“I don’t think I ever expected to be here again,” Taynan murmured to himself. After the time that he and his companions had spent, travelling throughout Ferelden, he could see how the alienage had been... lacking, how the humans who held power had shoved the elves of the city into the margins. Not that he hadn’t known there was a disparity there, but... He’d seen and experienced better than this, and now that he knew what he, his family, his friends, had been denied so much basic decency... 

A hand touched his shoulder. He glanced back to see Alistair, looking to him with concern and affection. Taynan looked to Alistair with a solemn smile. He appreciated the other man’s efforts to show him any sympathy, even if this man weren’t his lover. That they came from someone who loved him, of course, made it better, but it was all the more bitter under the circumstances.

After all, if Eamon had his way, Alistair would be on the throne, and Taynan wasn’t naïve enough to imagine that, in Eamon’s mind, that left a place for him. Not when the Theirin bloodline was at risk. He wanted to have the heir to a king’s bloodline on the throne, and secure the successive nature of it. Even if Taynan wasn’t another man, that Taynan was an elf... That marked his relationship with Alistair as something that Eamon would want to see ended. And if that weren’t enough, there was the fact that here in the alienage, him having a relationship with a human was... not something that most would celebrate. 

Of course, they weren’t here so that Taynan could bring Alistair to meet the family. “Unrest in the alienage,” Anora had said. And said in some manner that said she could not conceive of why the elves in the city would at all be upset, that she thought any anger would only be from the wasted life at Ostagar, and not the horrors and abuses that the city guard alone – saying nothing of nobles like Vaughan or Howe – hurled at them. 

Taynan’s eye twitched just at the thought of her lack of consideration. This was the woman who claimed to love this nation and be the best to rule it? A woman who had no idea of the harshness of the alienage, and no inclination to walk its roads? The apple was not far from the tree, apparently. This was the way that the line of succession in the nation was going to go.

And, despite the protections supposedly offered by virtue of being a Warden, Taynan had no illusions that, once the Blight was ended, any of these noble shems would be content to just allow him to tell them exactly what he thought of them all.

He chuckled to himself. He’d at least had the skill at words and diplomacy to frequently talk his way out of matters – until he’d stood in Vaughan’s room, listening as the bastard told him he could take some gold and leave Shianni behind, he’d managed to weave the right words to avoid serious trouble with the guards. Shianni herself, though... She had brained Vaughan with a bottle of wine. Granted, she hadn’t known he was the Arl’s son at the time, but Taynan wasn’t convinced that would have had any effect on her. 

“Such conditions... Maker...” Wynne moaned softly. 

“Welcome to the alienage. As I understand it, Denerim’s is better than many,” Taynan said. He felt certain there was a particularly bitter edge to his remark, and yet he made no effort to apologize for it. The humans were quick to shove elves into the margins and forget about them. Even if Wynne had lived in the Tower, been as unable to do anything about her situation as the elves were theirs, he’d seen the quarters at the Tower. Even with them torn apart by the demons and abominations, there’d been signs that said that, though the apprentices lived stacked together, advancement earned more privacy, more space. From that perspective, a human mage lived better than an elf in the alienage.

Granted, he wouldn’t trade for the scrutiny of the templars, so best to just move on from the topic entirely. 

Fortunately, Wynne seemed to understand his bitterness and simply shook her head in disgust at the circumstances of the alienage.

With Alistair, Wynne, and Leliana around him, the denizens of the alienage only saw a group of human intruders, casting scornful or just suspicious looks in their direction. No indication that any of them recognized that Taynan had returned to the alienage.

Then they approached the hovel that had been where he’d called home. Father, Soris, Shianni... They’d all called this place that. 

No one appeared to accost him as he approached the door, and locks were uncommon at best in the alienage – who had anything even worth stealing to begin with? Still, he knew that, being an unexpected visitor (a visitor to his home?) was likely to get a reaction from whoever was inside.

And yet, before the door had fully opened, he recognized the sight of Soris within the hovel, and broke into a grin at his cousin’s familiar face. 

It took a moment for Soris to realize who had entered, but he returned the grin as well. “Cousin! Taynan!” He pulled Taynan into an embrace, clearly relieved. Equally clear, Taynan realized, was that Soris had been convinced he wouldn’t see him again. He couldn’t blame him, either. 

“Soris!” Taynan was relieved that his cousin was still here. With the talk of uprisings and plagues... He realized how much he’d been fearing the worst. That his whole family had been swept up and wiped out. The very though chilled him. 

At least, if nothing else, he had one part of his family still.

“Cousin...” Soris pulled back, a relieved grin on his face. “When we heard about Ostagar, heard that no one survived... Your father was brokenhearted. Shianni...” Soris shook his head, clearly not liking where that line of thought went. Shianni would have still been recovering from Vaughan’s deeds when the word came in. It again broke his heart to think how she had suffered. 

It was then that Soris seemed to realize that Taynan hadn’t come alone. “Cousin...?” he asked, uncertain about the group of humans who’d accompanied him.

“These are... my friends.” Taynan hoped that Soris would understand implicitly that there was a long story involved – it had been nearly a year, after all, there were a great deal of stories that would need to be shared between them if they had the chance. 

As the introductions were made, Soris’s gaze seemed to linger on Taynan and Alistair – Taynan could almost see the moment that it clicked that he and Alistair were involved. “You always did say you didn’t want to get married, cousin,” Soris chuckled to him, too softly for the others to overhear.

Taynan smiled at the old joke. Though there was the sting of the failed wedding, he couldn’t help but appreciate the brief reminder of what had once been normal.

Still... Much as Taynan wanted to simply enjoy his reunion with his cousin, there was still the task of finding the evidence that would actually damage Loghain. “Soris... What’s been happening here? We heard rumors of a plague...”

Soris scowled. “The plague... Cousin, I don’t know what’s going on, but...” He looked away for a moment. “They took Valora. And... and your father.”

A burst of white-hot rage burst through Taynan’s vision, his mind, his entire being. “They? They who?” No one was going to hold his family, his kin. Even if he was thinking more of his father than Valora, she had married Soris, making her kin as well.

“Tevinter mages. They claim they can cure the plague that’s spread through the alienage.” Soris practically spat the words, indicating just how little he thought of Tevinter’s claim. Not that anyone, Taynan or those who stood beside him, would blame him. 

A dark look passed Wynne’s features. “Tevinter mages... I hate to indulge in base stereotyping, but you’d be hard-pressed to find one who didn’t dabble in blood magic.”

“Blood mages? And Loghain allows this?” Alistair’s words were almost a non sequitur to Taynan, until he remembered the reason that they’d come to the alienage in the first place. To find evidence against Loghain for the Landsmeet, to find things that allowed them to show the nobility of the nation that Loghain was leading them to ruin. 

The worst of it, though, was that Taynan was certain that the Landsmeet would care more about the involvement of Tevinter itself rather than the things that they were doing to the elves, the abductions, this plague, which surely was some kind of Tevinter trick... The fact that it was Tevinter, rather than it was Tevinter doing things to the elves, was going to be what the Landsmeet focused on. What Eamon cared about. What Anora utilized.

These were his allies?

“We’ll stop it,” Taynan swore.

“If you go to the square, near the tree, you’ll probably find Shianni, rallying against the Tevinter. She’s been doing it since even Valendrian was taken.”

Although he had never been particularly sympathetic towards the alienage’s elder, especially given that he’d never shaken a suspicion that Valendrian had moved up the timing for his wedding in the name of trying to lock Taynan into “adult life,” what was expected for any who lived in the alienage and the responsibilities that came with that, that he had been taken by the Tevinter was a blow as well – surely, if anyone in the alienage was considered untouchable by the human nobility, or at least worth paying attention to, it was the leader of the elves. It wasn’t much of a voice, but it was something that the humans were at least aware of to an extent. 

It meant that there was no effort being made to reign in these Tevinters. And that could only mean that the Tevinters were there for something worse than “healing a plague.”

Having a task to focus on, Taynan regretfully had to part ways with Soris. There were things to do here in the alienage. They had evidence to find – because, of course, a court of human nobles wouldn’t simply accept the word of elves. 

Taynan had to wonder how the court of Queen Anora, or the court envisioned by Arl Eamon, would differ. Would there be a place for elves in their worlds, or would they remain the forgotten part of the land they all spoke such fanciful words of love for?

He knew where his coppers were on that bet.

The crowd outside the house the Tevinters had set up in were not happy at Shianni’s inevitable rabble-rousing. Of course, Taynan found all of her words entirely reasonable, considering the circumstances. Why would anyone trust a Tevinter, after all? But he knew why – they were desperate. Their families were sick, they were scared that they’d be next... It was all too reasonable, made too much sense. When plagues hit, the alienage would always get it worst, as the humans would impose a quarantine on them first and offer cures or vaccines last.

Of course, Shianni also brought up a few other things for discussion...

“Wait, you’re married?” Alistair asked, sounding incredulous. He looked around at the others, as if asking if they’d been informed and he’d simply missed this. “You’ve never said anything.”

Taynan sighed. “Long story. The wedding didn’t actually happen, though, and... I can explain the rest of it later,” he said, wanting to focus on the matters of this plague. 

That seemed to mollify his lover, allowing them to return their attention to the subject they were there to deal with properly. 

Events spiraled out from there – entering the plague house, following the slave trail, combat with the Tevinters... It was straightforward enough in the simple facts of things happening, but it felt like it had reshaped Taynan’s world. 

This had been allowed to happen. Loghain had allowed it. The humans of the nation had allowed it. And the elves of the alienage had been powerless to defend against it. All of this had happened because of the refusal of the humans to see elves as people.

It had never sat well with him before. Now that he was a Grey Warden, now that he was in a position that demanded he be respected by the humans... It felt even more wrong. His mind rebelled at the idea that “the proper place” for elves was under the boot of humans. 

But, as they walked through the alienage, escorting the victims of the Tevinter slavers – his father, Cyrion, among them, though Valendrian had been taken, a fact that would only anger the elves of the alienage – Taynan had a very loud thought.

This place... didn’t fit him anymore. For all that he looked around and saw something familiar, it also felt foreign, alien to him. The desperation hit him harder than it ever had before, because he now could compare it to the way that the humans lived. But here, they knew no better. 

And, much to his pain, he realized that there were many here who simply didn’t want to know better. For some, it was a selfish desire, to know nothing of the world beyond the alienage, because it would mean knowing what they could never have, an awareness that could drive someone mad. Others, they were already resentful to the point of making it almost more a part of their identity than anything else, why bother with it. 

But he did. And he couldn’t go back to being blind after being granted the ability to see. 

The alienage was a slum. It was the ass end of the most prosperous city in Ferelden. He was almost certain that there must have been a similar location in Redcliffe, and it probably had been the first to be overrun by the horde of undead. 

What angered him wasn’t that, as he looked around the alienage, he could only see how poorly the elves here had matters. He had the experience to know what was missing from this life, and how the humans intentionally deprived them. 

As a child, his mother had encouraged him to ask the questions his father had not, the ones about the injustice they faced, simply because of their ears. She’d explained it as best she could, as best as he could understand, given his youth, but the depths of the disparity between the humans and the elves had never been so stark until he’d experienced the human side of Thedas, because once he became a Grey Warden – or, really, once he began travelling with humans in numbers enough for those who passed them to assume he was a servant and one of the others were the true leader of their band – he was able to live through what made human life so different.

And it just made him angry. The difference between the two worlds was so stark now. So apparent to him. He couldn’t put the blinders back into place at this point.

Cyrion, Shianni, and Soris were all determined to make the most of having Taynan returned to them, but he had come here with a purpose. He had the evidence of Loghain’s arrangement with the Tevinter slavers, and that was going to be enough for Eamon to demand the Landsmeet gather, force Loghain to step down.

The idea of Loghain in irons was deeply appealing to Taynan right about now.

That in mind, he politely but firmly begged off any reuniting, citing the concerns of the Blight that was closing in. They all seemed to understand that reasoning – Shianni was already planning ideas for how to train the denizens of the alienage in combat training, having paid enough attention when Tayna’s mother had taught him to be able to provide something. Cyrion urged caution towards her, though, considering that the alienage was not home to soldiers or anything of the sort, but people who were already scared, already afraid of losing everything – the plague, whatever had caused it, had left scars, even before the Tevinters had stolen entire families because of those fears.

Before Taynan and the others departed, Cyrion pulled him aside. “I cannot ask you to come home, knowing what I do of the Blight and the Grey Wardens.” He gave his son an affectionate yet sad smile. “You were always destined for greater things than our small community. I understand that now. It brings me no comfort, seeing my son putting himself in danger like this. But... This is what you’re meant to do.” He chuckled softly, patting Taynan’s shoulder. “For that, I am very proud of you.” Then he got a conspiratorial gleam in his eye, leaning closer to him. “And I can see just how foolish my efforts at getting you married off truly were.”

Taynan glanced back to Alistair, who seemed to have actually gotten Shianni to smile with his politeness towards her – which may just have been novelty at a shem genuinely offering such a thing to an elf, but since this was Shianni, one must savor their victories – and felt the smile of his own bubble to the surface. 

“I love him, father.” He looked back to his father. “I worry about the future, but... When I’m with him, that seems manageable, like something that will be dealt with, so long as he and I are together.”

“I felt the same with your mother,” Cyrion said, managing to maintain a stoic expression, not wanting to fall apart in front of his son. “Treasure that feeling, my son. Even as your journey takes you away from us, know that you’ll always be welcome back here.”

‘Welcome,’ he said. But, Taynan knew, he wasn’t going to be home. It would be a place he could visit. 

But he’d never come home to this place.

Some hours later, Taynan sat in the room that he and Alistair had been given at Eamon’s estate. Eamon, had been pleased that the evidence served as what was needed to undermine Loghain. Taynan wondered how pleased he’d be to try and reclaim the elves sold into Tevinter slavery. Given what he’d seen so far, he assumed that Eamon would demure, claim that Loghain dragging the nation had drained the coffers and there would be no way to reclaim them. 

Of course, if Alistair became king, a different answer might be the result of asking.

He stared at the fire from the edge of the bed, while Alistair had already crawled under the covers. They had a long day ahead of them, with Eamon setting about making the proceedings for the Landsmeet official, and he’d “encouraged” them to get some sleep now. 

“Alistair?” he asked, surprising his lover, who’d clearly been drifting off to sleep.

“Hm? What is it?” Alistair said, blinking and rubbing at his eyes. 

“You never asked about the things Shianni said. About the wedding, and... marriage.”

“Soris and Shianni spoke about it. They were... pretty willing to explain. I think they figured out we’re... together, without me having to say anything.”

That got a laugh from Taynan. Not like he’d ever been able to keep a secret from either of them. “Sounds right,” he said. He sighed, leaning back, stretching out beside his lover. “Alistair... How did you feel about what you saw there? The alienage itself, not the Tevinters, just... the place itself.”

Alistair made a face – statement enough, really, though he was certainly going to try to make what he could from that. “It... had a humble charm?”

“It’s a slum, no worries about offending me by insulting the place I grew up in. I can tell that it’s no place that anyone would want to live if they could help it.” The bitterness of his words lingered in Tayan’s mouth, fully aware that he did care for those who were confined to the alienage. But being trapped there... None in the alienage could escape it, could they? 

That he had... He would never be able to find that place offering the comfort and security that it once had. The thought just wouldn’t leave his mind, he was so fully aware of it now. It just kept reverberating in his head.

Taynan sighed. “Alistair, that was the place I was born, grew up... Thought I’d live and die in. And now... Now I can only think of it as a place that has been forced to be what it is. By people like Loghain, Howe, Anora... even Eamon.” Knowing what Eamon had meant to Alistair, Taynan was concerned his lover might want to try to defend him. But he didn’t say anything – probably, considering the way that Eamon had treated Alistair since suggesting the Landsmeet, he’d begun to question some of things that he’d always believed of his one-time caretaker.

After a moment, Alistair seemed to recognize something. “If I were king... I could order something done to aid the alienage, aid the elves there. Put efforts towards recovering those taken by Tevinter.” 

The words warmed Taynan’s heart – his lover was speaking of these things of his own accord, not because he’d planted the idea in his head. 

“You’ve resisted the idea of being king, though. Would you do that, just to make things better there?”

“If I don’t, who will?” Alistair sighed. “How many kings or queens have ever actually walked through an alienage?” He scoffed. “I doubt Cailan was allowed there, and Anora was the one who said that the elves had no reason to be upset.”

Maker, had Taynan been angry when she’d said that. But he’d bitten his tongue in the name of trying to work with the queen in these matters. Still...

“Words of someone who has never set foot in such a place. Probably wouldn’t even think she needed to, that it was business that would solve itself. The nobility are what matters...” Taynan cut himself off and sighed. 

And Alistair, having had a great deal of time to read his lover, leaned over, placing a hand on Taynan’s shoulder. “There’s something more, isn’t there? Something else that’s bothering you.”

“I’m... Being back there... It just made me realize that just how much I’ve changed since I left. I... I don’t belong there anymore. And... That was home. That was the place I was born, where I grew up, and... It wasn’t a place where I was meant to be anymore. And... If I don’t have that, then... Where is my home? What place is there for me?” He sighed. “You talk about the Wardens like they’re your family, that they gave you something that you never had. But for me... I had that. And being back there, I realized that I can’t have it back. But I don’t know where to go from here.”

A long silence stretched out, broken only by the crackle of the fireplace. Then, Taynan felt Alistair’s arm, firm and strong, wrap around him, pulling them tightly together. “You have me. Whatever else, you have me.”

“If you were king, though? Or would the Landsmeet allow a king to take an elven man as his consort?” Eamon’s protests against Anora, that there must be a Theirin on the throne, just made Taynan think that, if they attempted it, his head would legitimately explode. “And if you aren’t king... Would Anora truly give the alienage the care and consideration of the parts of the city that the humans live in? After dismissing any reason for my people to be “upset” over how Howe had treated them? When there was a fucking plague taking place there and she didn’t even bother to know about?”

No decision they could make seemed to offer anything satisfactory. All of the outcomes he could see were compromised, bound up in some other additional consequence that would lead to something to taint the idea. 

It seemed a solution confounded Alistair as well, as he simply held to Taynan, not saying anything, just... holding him. 

It offered a little peace, Taynan had to admit. If the alienage wasn’t home, he did have Alistair’s arms. Perhaps he should simply run away with the Wardens, with Alistair, and, perhaps, insist on Queen Anora granting a boon of allowing an elf – Shianni, maybe – as the new arl of Denerim. The idea at least made him chuckle, imagining her in a position to tell off all the shems who’d try to rein her in, considering that she’d be able to call upon her cousin for assistance if they were presenting a problem. 

There was, he supposed, still some time to think it over. Even if Eamon pushed, the Landsmeet would still be a couple of days away, even with the nobility having been in the process of arriving for it for weeks now. Surely Loghain would drag his heels, arguing that this was foolish in the midst of a Blight.

“Alistair... Just hold me. Just... let us have now, if we might not have later,” he murmured.

“We will. Somehow, I swear it,” Alistair said, trying to soothe his lover’s fears.

It was hard to believe him, but... Taynan decided he would try.

After all, he didn’t have any place other than Alistair’s arms that he felt certain he belonged. It might not be much to most anyone else, but if he had only the one place, then he’d be content to be there and call it home.

With good fortune, he would have home in Alistair’s embrace.


End file.
